


Checklist

by mercuriosity



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-05
Updated: 2005-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:56:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuriosity/pseuds/mercuriosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John never sees it coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checklist

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the sga_flashfic Documentation challenge.

The Captain Kirk jokes got really old, really fast, but John knew it was useless to protest--people would think what they wanted to think, no matter what he or anyone else might say. And anyway, Rodney clearly thought he was God's gift to a comedy-starved galaxy; who was John to strip him of that illusion?

So when he saw Rodney open his mouth on the way back to the jumper, he just shot him a look and said, "Save your breath for running." And since Rodney was a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them, he wisely shut his mouth for the time being so they could get back to the task at hand: namely, running away from about five hundred spear-wielding natives who thought John had insulted their village.

Apparently, in their culture, if the chieftain's daughter sat practically on your lap at dinner, and insisted on serving you herself (John had drawn the line at actually being hand-fed); and if, later that night, she invited you to join her for a dip in the sacred hot springs and then offered to give you a ceremonial backrub, and wouldn't take no for an answer; it was basically the same as a betrothal. Who knew?

The chief hadn't been too happy to find out that a son-in-law was not, after all, a part of their trade deal; that was about where the spears had come in to the picture.

John tripped over a root and stumbled the last few yards to the jumper; Teyla and Ronon were already inside, giving cover fire with stunners. Rodney barreled in a few seconds after him, and John said, "Dial the gate, we're out of here," already at the controls and taking them up.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rodney collapse into his seat, gasping for breath. John knew he could have counted on a good ten minutes of silence, before, but all those off-world missions hadn't been for nothing--Rodney was definitely in better shape these days, even though he complained about the same. The downside of which was that all too soon, "Oh my God," Rodney said. "I can't wait to get back and tell Elizabeth that our negotiations for food fell through because of a diplomatic incident with massage oil," and John just rolled his eyes, resigned, and flew them through the Stargate.

\---

"--and that's why Colonel Sheppard needs to be put on a leash any time we go offworld," Rodney finished. "The end."

Elizabeth's eyebrows crawled another couple centimeters up towards her hairline. "John?" she said, turning to him. "Would you care to...give your own assessment of what went wrong?"

"What? What?" Rodney said. "Are you implying I'm not telling the full unbiased truth?"

"Look," John said, "I didn't see it coming, okay? I thought she was just being, you know. Friendly."

"Friendly with your lap?" Rodney demanded.

"...yes."

"God, can you really be that oblivious? I mean, I don't doubt your capacity for being clueless, but you being"--he waved his hand vaguely in John's direction--"you, I don't know how you could have made it to your age without having developed at least some sort of predator-warning sense."

"Gentlemen!" Elizabeth interrupted--for which John was secretly grateful because it saved him from having to come up with a witty retort--and fixed them each in turn with a Look. "It's unfortunate, but these kinds of cultural misunderstandings do happen. I think you should both get some rest now; hopefully your next mission will be more successful."

Rodney snorted. "Yes, Colonel, you'd better preserve your stamina for our next series of negotiations."

"Can I strangle him?" John said, turning pleading eyes on Elizabeth. "Just a little bit?"

"Gentlemen, get out of my office."

"Yes'm," John muttered, and tried to look cool and not at all like he was running for the door.

Predictably, Rodney didn't let up once they were outside. "I'm thinking you need some kind of list, Colonel," he said, his hands framing an imaginary document in the air. "If you really are that clueless, I mean."

"Give it a rest, Rodney," John said, without much hope--his best bet was just to walk as fast as he could back to his quarters, and hope Rodney would get tired of his little joke sooner rather than later.

"101 Ways to Tell if This Week's Alien Hottie is Making Eyes at You," Rodney shouted after him. "Number one: Does she have eyes?"

John kept walking. Rodney was a smart guy, but there were a lot of things he didn't understand.

\---

He'd been a skinny kid, small for his age, all knees and elbows and hair that wouldn't stay put despite the increasingly creative efforts of his poor mother. Being a military brat, moving from town to town and house to house, was a great way to be marked an outsider; every new school he went to it seemed like the other kids were smarter, bigger, scarier than the last one. He made friends here and there--usually other outcasts who liked him because he made them feel more normal by comparison. They might get made fun of for their clothes, or for having a lisp, or being a crybaby--but at least they were _local_.

At one school they played dodgeball every Friday in gym class. He remembered thinking of Friday gym class as the trial he had to go through before the weekend; if he could just get through this, through the bruises and the sweat and the sick fluttery feeling in his stomach, he'd get two whole days of not having to go to school. Every Friday, he did his best not to stand out, not to be a target; but every Friday he came home bruised and exhausted anyway--and if a few hot tears trickled out from his squeezed-shut eyes sometimes, it was only once he was in his own room, and no one could see him.

On one particular Friday, when the lunch recess bell rang--and the rest of the class, he knew, would be heading for the gym--he lingered on the edge of the playground and hid from the recess duties when they came around. For the next hour, he could have been the only person on the school grounds, everything was so quiet. When he saw the other kids coming back from the gym, he attached himself to the end of the group and filed in along with them, filled with the nervous elation of having discovered a means of escape.

The feeling lasted until the last recess period of the day, later that afternoon. He was sitting by himself on a swing, kicking at the ground beneath his feet, when he suddenly looked up and realized he was surrounded by boys from his class, all of them bigger than he was, mean-looking. He shrank back instinctively.

"Where were you in gym class today, twerp?" one of them said.

John couldn't answer; all the moisture had left his mouth and collected on his palms, sliding against the metal links of the swing.

"You _afraid_ of dodgeball?" another one sneered. "What are you, some kind of sissy?"

John remembered feeling an almost transcendent moment of terror--a pause in which the word _sissy_ hung in the air, and the world seemed to take a breath--and then someone kicked gravel up in his face, time started moving again; and the first blows began to fall. When the bell rang, a few minutes later, they left him with one more swift kick and then scattered.

The teacher sent him to the nurse's office--ordered him to go, actually, on pain of calling his parents. The nurse, a dark-haired woman with cinnamon-colored skin and soft hands, had cleaned and bandaged him up, all the while frowning faintly, looking at his face, at the swelling of his lip and the bruise forming around his eye; and when she'd finished, she said: "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine," John had said, looking down at his grass-stained knees.

"You're sure you don't want to tell me anything?" Her voice was very quiet. She was crouched down to his level; they would have been eye-to-eye if he had looked up. "Anything about what happened?"

"I told you," John said dully. "We were playing dodgeball in gym class. I got hit a couple times, that's all."

"Mr. Litzak said you weren't in gym class today."

John sat, and didn't say anything, and after a moment he heard the nurse sigh as she stood up.

"Well," she said. "Be more careful next time."

A month later his family had to move again; still later, after the rollercoaster ride of puberty, he learned to find himself a girlfriend first thing upon arriving in any new town. He'd grown up, filled out; he wasn't the scrawny kid anymore, and no one was trying to clobber him with dodgeballs now. But at the same time as he started to notice girls at school looking at him differently, giving him their attention and trying to get his, he'd realized he was in the middle of another game already; only this time, no one would even tell him the rules. But he knew, without needing to be told, that some of the rules were the same; he was still the new kid, after all, and he didn't need to do anything to stand out any more than he already did.

By the time John was seventeen and looking at colleges, he'd dated a steady string of girls, discovered sex, and had his heart broken a couple of times--nothing too serious. He'd made an effort not to give too much of himself to anyone, because if you gave yourself away you ended up with nothing; this had suited his girlfriends just fine, most of whom, he knew, saw him as more of an accessory than anything else: like the tiny, expensive bags they squealed over until they were replaced the next week by a cuter, newer version.

Sometimes he slipped up, let himself feel too much: it had hurt when Kelly Abrams had dumped him at the school dance, and when Lisa Montrose had gone back to her ex-boyfriend; sometimes he wanted nothing more than to give up, give in, just put his head down and rest for a while. But he couldn't do that, he knew. He'd learned a lesson, all those years ago, and it had stayed with him.

Whether you played the game or not, you got beat up just the same. But at least if you played, there was always the chance you'd get good at it.

\---

Of course it was too much to hope that Rodney would forget about it; the next morning he found, taped to his door, an actual handwritten list. Across the top it said:

**  
SIGNS TO LOOK OUT FOR  
(because these things just never work out well)**

John was impressed despite himself; the list went on at surprising length. Obviously this was a topic Rodney had given a lot of thought to--or rather, what would be a lot of thought for anyone else, but which was probably the neurological equivalent of a twitch for Rodney. He took the list down from the door and skimmed it as he walked down the hallway.  


  
  
  
  
_Does she wax poetic about what a beautiful name "John" is? (Note: She's lying. Or stupid. Or both; probably both.)_

Does she show up at your room/tent/yurt after everyone else has gone to bed? Clothed only in moonlight?

Does she make any reference to the size of the gene pool?

Does she claim to have a psychic bond with you (creepy)?

Are you trapped somewhere? Is it cold? Does she suggest huddling together for warmth? Or, alternately, are you trapped somewhere hot so that one or both of you must remove at least one layer of clothing?

Does she comment on the size of your gun?

Does she start tripping over imaginary cracks in the ground and conveniently falling into your arms?

Does she say anything about how nice it would be to visit Atlantis, your homeworld, or your parents (if the latter: RUN, do not walk, away)?

Does she insist that footrubs are a usual part of their trade negotiations?

Does she take your clothes while you're bathing and claim to be washing them? For two days?

Do you have manly, heroic wounds? Is she tending them? (cf. "noble brow")  
  
  
---  
  


"Ah, Colonel Sheppard!" Rodney said, as John stepped out of the transporter. "How do you like my handy guide? It doubles as a drinking game for the rest of us."

"Yes, Rodney, very funny. Did you stay up all night working on this?"

Rodney smirked. "Oh, please. All I had to do was look through some old mission reports. It practically wrote itself."

"Right," John said, rolling his eyes; but he folded the list up anyway, and put it in his pants pocket. He could take a joke, and Rodney'd had his fun; now hopefully that would be the end of that.

\---

It all started out routinely enough: another day, another planet; another alien tour guide who seemed really eager to show him the ways of her people.

"If these medicines are as powerful as you say, then they are truly remarkable," said the alien tour guide--Nalya, she said her name was--while gazing at John with deep blue eyes.

"Yep. All that and a side of fries."

Nalya looked puzzled. "Fries?"

John coughed. "Sorry. It's a--cultural thing."

"Do you think your people would be interesting in trading for medicines like these?" Teyla said.

"Yes," Nalya said. "Very much so. However, before our people begin any negotiations, we like to share a meal with our potential trading partners." On the word "partners," she turned and gave John a dazzling smile, which John returned, trying to pretend he didn't see Rodney making gagging motions behind her. Ronon apparently didn't share Rodney's disgust, having perked up noticeably at the mention of food.

"It will be several minutes before the midday meal is ready," Nalya said. "In the meantime, perhaps you would like to rest and refresh yourselves. Or," she continued, smiling at John again, "perhaps you would like to see one of our famous conservatories, Colonel Sheppard? As you know, the people of Effune are renowned for their interest in horticulture."

"I'd love to," John said, because unlike _some_ people--with a quick glare at Rodney--he knew how to be gracious.

The greenhouses turned out to be actually pretty cool; he'd bet money that the botanists would be falling all over themselves to get their hands on some of these specimens; and for the rest of them, it meant the possibility of fresh fruit. The food was pretty great, too, and they even got to take some of it with them into the negotiations--which John figured was a technique to make them more agreeable to whatever conditions the Effuni set forth, but, hey, it was working. Even Rodney seemed mollified--or, at least, his mouth was too full for him to open it and say anything that would offend everyone present. So all in all, things went really well.

"I hope you will stay for the ceremony tomorrow," Nalya said afterwards, as she was showing him to his room.

"What ceremony would that be?" Great, was this going to be one of those bizarre alien rituals that made writing mission reports really interesting?

"The marriage ceremony," she said, as if it should be obvious. At his confused look, she added, "Did I not tell you? I am to be married."

"You--what?" John stared, reviewing the day in his head. No, she sure _hadn't_ told him--but then, it wouldn't be the first time the topic had managed to mysteriously drop out of the conversation. "I mean, uh, congratulations. Who's the guy?"

"He is the son of another large family; it was my father's wish that I would do my part to form a union between our two houses, one which will be beneficial to all our people."

John frowned. "What, like some kind of arranged marriage?"

"Something like that," she said, smiling. "You are in the military on your world; you are also bound by duty, are you not?"

"Yeah, but." John paused. "See, on our world, duty doesn't usually involve our personal lives."--though that wasn't entirely true, but it was near enough.

She gave him a knowing look. "I think we are not so different. Like you, I do what I see as my duty. And for the sake of our people, I do it gladly." She turned to him, and suddenly he realized they'd made it to his room, they were in his room, they were in his room standing close enough to share breath. Nalya looked up at him through her lashes and, okay, wow, put a hand on his chest. He got the message loud and clear, even before she said, "Though, I do confess..." She lowered her eyes, a faint blush rising to her cheeks. "I might selfishly desire just--one night, for myself."

He looked down at the top of her head, her pale hand where it was resting against his shirt. She was beautiful and nice and her hair smelled fantastic, and somewhere along the way, when he hadn't been paying attention, things had gotten out of his control, as usual. "I don't know if this is such a good idea," he said.

"Please," she said, looking up at him--

"Yeah, okay," John said, pulling her to him. Maybe he hadn't learned anything after all. "Yes."

\---

As mornings-after went, this was definitely ranking at the bottom of his list; possibly even worse than that one time he woke up naked on the football field, what with the gun against his head and all.

"Don't move," Nalya said to the rest of his team. "Unless you want the Colonel to die."

She looked every bit as beautiful as she had the night before, he noticed, only now she was holding a gun and aiming it at the rest of his team. Teyla and Ronon were standing with their hands behind their heads; he could see the muscles in their arms tensing and relaxing restlessly. Rodney was staring alternately at him, at Nalya, and at the rest of their captors, wide-eyed. His hair was mussed, and there was a pink mark on his cheek, as if he'd forgotten to take his headset off before falling asleep.

They made Rodney dial the gate and send the message back to Atlantis: John and his team would be returned, unharmed, in exchange for the rest of the medical supplies which they'd been offering to trade. Elizabeth shouted and stormed and finally, sounding resigned, agreed to send a team through with the medicines.

He caught Nalya's eye as she was walking past him, away from the gate.

"I'm sorry, John," she said. "It was nothing personal."

"Yeah," John said. "I got that." Late-breaking news: he was apparently the biggest sucker in two galaxies. Surprise, surprise.

He put his head down and let them march him to a prison cell without a word. Rodney started bitching after about thirty seconds of attempting stoic calm, while Ronon paced back and forth and growled at the guards about all the pain he saw in their futures; John just sank back against the wall, closed his eyes, and waited to be rescued. He didn't even get any of the usual satisfaction from the sounds of things exploding in the distance, about half an hour later, or from the looks on the guards' faces just before Lorne and his team shot them with stunners.

"Good to see you're still in one piece, sir," Lorne said. "How'd you like to get out of there?"

"Yeah, okay," John said.

Elizabeth was running down the steps to meet them as soon as they set foot back in Atlantis. "What the hell happened?" she said.

John opened his mouth to reply, but Rodney beat him to it. "Samson here met an offworld Delilah."

"Rodney," John said, warning.

"Oh, I'm sorry, do you object to my completely accurate summary of events?" Rodney said. "You'll forgive me if _I_ have issues with my life repeatedly being put at stake because of your neverending quest for interplanetary tail!"

"Rodney--"

"Do you need to review my list again? Or are you really just up for grabs to anyone with a pretty face?"

The noise of the gateroom receded to a muffled roar, or maybe that was just the blood pounding in his ears.

"You can take your goddamned list and shove it, Rodney," John said, calmly, when he could talk without gritting his teeth, and then he turned and walked away.

\---

He managed to avoid Rodney for most of the rest of the day--and he was _not_ sulking in his room, he tried to convince himself, really not--but that evening there was a tentative knock on his door, just as he was stretching out on the bed with _War and Peace_.

"Go away, Rodney," he said.

"I don't have to knock, you know. I could just as easily open it myself."

John sighed, and went to open the door.

"What do you want?"

"I, um," Rodney said, and it was then that John noticed Rodney had a stack of DVDs held in one hand, and half a dozen chocolate bars in the other--and it was the good stuff, too, the kind he lied about having whenever people offered to trade him for it.

"So, um," Rodney started again, "is this amazing susceptibility to feminine wiles a Pegasus Galaxy thing, or was it that way back on Earth, too?"

John raised his eyebrows. If that was Rodney's attempt at apologizing, he was better off sticking to the material bribes.

"And you should get Beckett to check you for alien STDs, you know."

"He's already given me a clean bill of health," John said, because really, he could only watch Rodney dig himself deeper and deeper for so long. "And anyway, what kind of idiot do you think I am? I used protection."

Rodney gaped at him. "You take condoms off world?" he said. Then, "Wait, look who I'm talking to: Lieutenant Colonel Ladies' Man. Of course you do. The galaxy is your singles bar. My God, what must it be like to be you?"

John could have said _I've wondered the same thing about you_, but he didn't; he just shrugged, wearily, and said, "Don't believe the hype."

The moment stretched out between them, during which Rodney shifted his weight from side to side and appeared to be participating in a strange form of wrestling that mostly involved various facial expressions. Finally, John said, "So, do you want to watch a movie, or--"

"Shut up, shut up," Rodney said, "shut up a second, will you," and shoved the DVDs and chocolate into John's arms, grabbed him by the front of the shirt, and kissed him.

And, okay, John _really_ hadn't seen that coming--momentarily stunning him, like _flash, bang_\--nor had he anticipated the way his hands would automatically reach up to frame Rodney's face, DVDs clattering to the floor around them.

"Rodney, what," he started, feeling Rodney steering them towards his bed, neither of them willing to let go. _What are you doing?_ he wanted to say. _What are_ we _doing?_

"I swear to God," Rodney said, sounding breathless. "If I have to stand there and watch you fumble through the local version of a mating ritual _one more time_\--" and then he shut up because they'd reached the bed and he was busy basically falling on top of John.

John felt like he was holding on for dear life, regardless of the solid surface beneath him. Kissing Rodney was like nothing he could have expected, because--even if he had known how to want something like this, even if he could have imagined imagining it--how could he have known? All his experience, which he'd always thought of as a fair amount, seemed to shrink and narrow behind his closed eyes, collapsing to a single small starpoint in an infinite, expanding universe. Nobody had ever kissed him as sweetly, as desperately, as Rodney was kissing him, like he wanted to crawl under John's skin, like he would die if he didn't kiss him. Everything he knew, or thought he knew--it was nothing, he didn't know anything, compared to this: Rodney's wide mouth on his, the warm heavy weight of him, his big hands petting up and down John's sides.

And John had always known Rodney had good hands, really clever hands, and he definitely encouraged what Rodney was currently using them for, which was undoing the fly of John's pants and incidentally turning John on _so much_ that he was honestly a little shocked at himself, at the intensity of what he was feeling.

"Can I," Rodney said, sliding down John's body, "let me," and then he bent his head and John found himself on the receiving end of the sweetest, sincerest "I'm sorry"-blowjob of his life.

"Oh," John said, dazed, hips thrusting drunkenly, "oh. God, _yes_." He let his head fall back against the pillows, fingers combing fretfully through Rodney's thin hair. Whatever Rodney's verbal apologies might lack, from this angle his oral communication skills were--oh, yeah--just fine, fantastic even, message coming through loud and clear. He wanted Rodney to apologize to him all _night_\--but that wasn't going to happen, because he was coming about two minutes later, bright and starry, a little bit like dying, a little bit like a supernova behind his eyelids.

He didn't even have time to recover, to put himself back together, before Rodney was climbing back up the bed, kissing him breathlessly with his wet, wet mouth.

"Give me a sec," John said, reaching for Rodney, because he'd maybe never done this before but he knew it was only proper to reciprocate where orgasms were involved; but Rodney was already there, unzipping his own pants, cock poking John's stomach as Rodney shoved gracelessly against him.

"You have people who care about you," Rodney was saying, panting. "You don't have to-- you, you're better than that. You _deserve_ better--" and he buried his face against John's neck and came, shuddering, all over John's stomach and both their clothes.

Afterwards, lying sweaty and tangled up together in a way that really shouldn't have been comfortable, John said, "Pinch me."

Rodney raised his head, frowning. His lips were still obscenely red. It was a good look for him. "Is this some kind of weird fetish?" he said. Then, "Oh wait--let me guess, you didn't see this coming."

"Well," John said. "No. In my defense, none of this was on the list."

Rodney hummed happily. "Yes, well," he said. "Someone of my intelligence can't be bound by convention," and John hid his smile in Rodney's hair and thought about how very lucky he was to be here, surrounded on all sides by the extraordinary.


End file.
